There are several criteria that tennis parents use to understand the college tennis recruiting process. Men’s and women’s college coaches will research a player’s UTR, tennisrecruiting.net, and USTA rankings. Each college coach has their unique evaluation process and priorities. Other essential factors include meeting a minimum academic standard, having a good personality fit with the team, having a good work ethic, etc. A coach will first examine the high school player ratings and metrics for their tennis results. This post will focus on that part of the coach analysis.
Tennisrecruiting.net
Tennisrecruiting.net was the premier metric before UTR, and is still an integral part of the coach’s analysis. It ranks players either blue chip (top 25 nationally) or with stars (1-5, with 5 stars being the best). Tennisrecruiting.net uses grade level and gender to rank high school players in a way that is easy for college coaches to understand. They can refer to a recruit as a three-star or four-star, similar to how high school football and basketball players are described.
United States Tennis Association
USTA (United States Tennis Association) rankings are also a prominent part of the process for many coaches. It places the players in a ranking order, according to the points they acquire from winning matches in USTA tournaments. This blogger believes that USTA rankings can frequently be skewed in favor of the kids who play the most events. USTA rankings are the only metric of the three where a player gets a boost if the opponent withdraws from a match, even before walking on the court.
Universal Tennis Rating
UTR stands for Universal Tennis Rating (UTR). It was developed in 2008 and has grown in popularity quickly due to its ability to rank players across age, gender, and even nationality. With the advent of UTR, college coaches can use a metric to compare players worldwide. While no perfect metric exists, UTR is the most accurate and detailed index of players’ tennis skill and past results. Players are rated between 1 and 16. For high school players interested in determining if they are qualified to play for specific colleges, comparing their UTR to the players on the team is a great place to start. For example, a player with a UTR of 9 is an excellent high school player but would not be competitive at a top-tier Division 1 college (such as Florida or Virginia) where the players generally range from 13-15. If you have never familiarized yourself with UTR, visit their website.
UTR is the only one that considers the match’s score when determining the player ranking. This is good because if a player loses a close game to another top player, UTR will give the player credit for being close both tennisrecruiting.net and USTA rankings do not give any credit for a loss, no matter how close it is. One of the unique aspects of UTR is that a player’s ranking can go up even when the opponent wins the match. For example, if a UTR 6 plays a UTR 8 and loses 7-6, 7-5, the UTR of the UTR 6 player will rise.
Conclusion
One big mistake I see is that parents and kids focus too much on the metrics at a young age. While it is undoubtedly crucial during high school junior and senior years to have ratings/rankings attractive to college coaches, it is not nearly as important in the earlier years. Yes, tournaments are selecting players based on their USTA rankings and UTR (not tennisrecruiting.net, though), but the most important two things for parents and their tennis-playing kids are to focus on improvement and enjoyment. Some kids avoid valuable experience due to a fear of losing to a lower-ranked player. That impedes progress and damages development. There are other kids who “burn out” from excessive stress about match results. The kids who improve the most are the ones with a balanced outlook on the process of developing tennis skills over a long period. Match results are a barometer but should not be considered paramount. The difference between winning and losing is often minuscule, so defining a win as a success and a loss as a failure is short-sighted.
Finally, here is a word of advice from a fellow with three collegiate players: Enjoy the process! The time spent practicing and traveling for competitions is an amazing bonding time, and it will provide memories that will last a lifetime. Keep it fun, stay positive, and be proud of how you handle adversity. Bouncing back from a less-than-ideal result is one of the best life lessons anyone can learn, so remember all the good that comes out of the long process toward improvement!
